Chapter 3
LANEY
E arly morning light filtered in through the big window over the sink, casting stripes of lazy sunshine across the pocked wooden countertops. I stood in the kitchen of my childhood home, waiting for the coffee to brew.
The lived-in scent that had soaked into the house itself over decades of my family living here wafted to my nostrils, something vaguely like old coffee, varnish, and laundry detergent.
I fixated on the cracked tile behind the sink that hadn’t been fixed since I’d been in middle school, wondering if either Dad or I were ever going to get around to replacing it.
Outside, I could already hear the sounds of the city starting to wake up. The distant grind of a streetcar drifted in through the open window, a dog barking down the block, and some guy yelling about sourdough like it was a national emergency.
It was all classic San Francisco, my home. The only place I’d ever lived and would ever want to. The coffee was ready just as I heard the familiar sound of my dad’s key in the lock. A few seconds later, the shuffling of boots followed the slight creak of the front door.
“Morning, sunshine,” I called over my shoulder as I poured coffee into his favorite chipped mug. It said World’s Okayest Detective , in faded blue letters on no-longer-white porcelain. He claimed to hate it, but he still used it daily.
“Good morning, baby.” He shrugged out of his jacket as he stepped into the kitchen, his graying hair a ruffled mess and his greenish hazel eyes bloodshot and bleary. “You’re on your way out already?”
“Soon.” I turned to set the mug down on the counter in front of him. “Another all-nighter at the station, huh?”
“Graveyard shift. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.
” He lowered his burly body into a chair at our breakfast nook, the lines etched into his face deep with lack of sleep and a lifetime of serving the public while the city slept.
He brought his tired eyes up to mine. “Are you doing okay?”
“Me?” I wrapped my fingers around my mug and leaned with my hip across the counter, staring at him across the modestly sized room. “ You’re the one who works too hard.”
“You worry too much,” he countered before picking up his coffee and taking a small sip. “Don’t let Megan give you a hard time today, okay?”
I pumped my eyebrows at him. “She usually gives me ulcers. I’d prefer if she just gave me a hard time for once.”
He chuckled, the sound low and weary as he rubbed a hand over his face.
As tired as he obviously was though, he was still sharp.
Still interested in our daily catch-up session before I headed over to the store and he’d finally get to crawl into bed.
“Any hints yet why she suddenly blew into town when you were going out there to see her next week anyway?”
“Nope. Still only that one message I told you about last night to say that she’s here and she wants to see me in the morning. I asked what was going on, but she hasn’t even read my text yet.”
He sighed. “Let’s hope she’s finally come to her senses and she’s giving you their share of the store, huh?”
“I wish, but I have a better shot at meeting Prince Charming and having him steal me away to his castle where he gives me my own library, complete with rolling ladders and a state-of-the-art coffee machine.”
“You read too much.” He let out a gruff chuckle. “No one has castles anymore, Lane.”
“At least I’m realistic about my expectations for my meeting with Megan. She’s not going to give me their share, Daddy.”
“She’s your cousin,” he reminded me needlessly. “Try to be nice.”
“She’s a leech with good hair and some followers.” I took a sip of my coffee, waiting for an argument I knew wouldn’t come.
It never did when it came to Megan. Dad stayed out of our business at the store and he rarely spoke to his brother, Matthew, Megan’s father. As a cop, Dad had let Matthew have the store after my grandfather had passed away.
He and his now ex-wife had run it together until about fifteen years ago, when they’d gone through a nasty divorce.
My mom had stepped in, helping out to keep the Rhodes family legacy alive while Matthew and his ex tore each other apart, spoiling their daughter rotten in the process, each in an attempt to get her to like one more than the other.
Since she’d kept the place afloat by herself for so long, Matthew had eventually agreed to give us forty-nine percent of the share—and now, I was stuck managing it with my snobby cousin.
The last time Dad and Matthew had spoken, it’d ended with a slammed car door and strings of curses from my dad that I definitely hadn’t been supposed to hear. Dad didn’t have time for drama and Matthew? Well, Megan had gotten her flair for the dramatic from both her parents. That was for sure.
“What time are you meeting her?” Dad asked after taking another sip of his coffee. “Do you have time for some eggs?”
“I’m not holding my breath for her to show up, so I probably do have time for eggs, but she’s supposed to be there at eight.” I glanced at the clock above the door. “Which means I should get going.”
“If you’re not holding your breath, why are you leaving without breakfast?”
“Because I still have a business to run.” I swiped my keys and purse off the counter. “Megan might only care about the profit, but someone needs to do inventory with Anna this morning and that someone is me.”
“It’s a tough job,” he repeated what he’d said earlier.
I grinned. “But someone’s got to do it.”
He chuckled, giving me a one-armed hug. I bent over to brush a kiss to his stubbled cheek. Stepping into the cool, late spring air outside, I felt my head clear like the reset button had been hit inside my brain.
Bright sunshine and a cloudless blue sky stretched out overhead, a slightly brisk breeze sweeping down the street. Everything felt clean and crisp for a moment, like the day really was a brand new beginning, but then I remembered Megan existed and I sighed.
Everything I’d told Gwen yesterday had been true. I really did hope that Megan’s sudden interest in the company meant good things, but history had a way of repeating itself, and history just wasn’t in my favor with her.
As I walked into the store, the little old bell Grandpa had installed above the door tinkled and I smiled.
Despite everything else, I loved this place.
What my great-grandparents had started as a small neighborhood grocery store in the 1940s, before World War II, had been reinvented into a baby boutique during the sixties.
We specialized in high quality, affordable baby goods of all kinds, from the cute little onesies hanging on rails, to strollers, baths, toys, and everything in between.
We catered for baby, Mama, and Dada, and we also gave classes, hosted workshops, and served as a connecting point for the families in the area.
I inhaled a deep breath, cherishing the faint scent of baby powder in the air from the diffusers Anna had installed.
Perfect .
After I’d set my purse down in my tiny office at the back, I ventured out onto the main floor, grabbing a clipboard to start taking inventory while I waited for Megan.
Eight a.m. came and went without any trace of my cousin.
By eight-oh-five, I was still convincing myself she’d walk in soon, but by nine, I was revisiting all the reasons I needed to legally limit her access to alcohol and decision-making.
A little before ten, Anna, one of my sales associates, arrived and went straight for the cash register, her brown eyes on mine with a look in them I knew too well. “No Megan?”
I exhaled through my nostrils and shook my head. “You know how she is. She treats punctuality like a loose suggestion of a day on which she should consider making an appearance.”
Luella bounced in a moment later in her usual whirlwind of bright pink lipstick, Gen Z confidence, and the kind of never-say-die attitude that would allow her to start a TikTok trend in a national power outage even if the Wi-Fi was down.
“Did you guys see this?” she said, holding her phone out toward us like it was an exhibit in a murder trial. “Megan was at the Full Moon party last night.”
As I leaned in to get a closer look, Luella started swiping through the photos on my cousin’s Instagram. She was in a sequined blazer, her tongue out and her thumb and pinkie finger sticking out like she was rocker instead of a loser.
I groaned. “So that’s why she’s late. She’s probably still drunk. Good to know that she probably won’t be showing up at all. Let’s just get to work, shall we? We can’t spend all day wondering about her.”
The rest of the morning passed in a blur of customers, deliveries, and ever increasing levels of caffeine to keep up with it all.
Megan didn’t arrive until after two, at which point, she breezed in like she was right on time, oversized sunglasses covering her eyes and an iced coffee in one hand, her phone in the other.
Zero shame or apologies about keeping me waiting for over six hours. “Hello, my loves. Did you see my Stories last night? I got to pose with Zlasher.”
I had no clue who—or what—that was, but I didn’t ask.
I just stared at my cousin, with her fluffy, cropped jacket and her platinum blonde hair, and wondered how we’d been spawned from the same gene pool.
As I pictured launching a chair through the nearest window out of pure frustration, I smiled at her.
“You do realize you were supposed to be here at eight, right?”
She shrugged, twisting to dig in her sparkly little purse and producing a tube of glossy lip balm. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“Let’s go talk in my office.” I stalked toward her and grabbed her wrist, dragging her through the store with me.
Megan gasped as if I’d shattered a bone. She yanked her arm away from me once we were sealed into the storage closet that I’d turned into office space a few years ago. She folded her arms and finally— finally —pulled those sunglasses off.
“What was that all about?” she asked glibly. “Are you really that angry that I’m a little late?”
I snorted. “A little late would’ve had you here by eight-thirty.
You need to take this more seriously, Meg.
We’re running a business. One we can expand and build on to add our own little sprinkle of magic to our family’s legacy, but I can’t do that on my own.
Not unless you just sell me your share.”
There. I’d said it. Not for the first time, but hey, I was borrowing some of Luella’s never-say-die attitude right then.
Megan groaned but recovered fast and clapped back without hesitating. “I only kept my share because first, you couldn’t afford to buy me out, and second, my dad stopped paying off my credit cards.”
She pouted at me like she really expected I was going to just drop it and say, oh, well, in that case, okay then .
Feeling like I was about to lose my mind, I sighed and forced myself to stay calm.
“You won’t need him to pay off your credit cards if you just work with me.
What we’ve got here is something special.
I really, really believe that this second location and expanding our online offering can be huge for us. I just need you to meet me halfway.”
She sniffed. “I came all the way here. That’s more than halfway.”
“I was going to come out to LA next week,” I reminded her. “ You set this morning’s meeting, remember?”
“Oh.” She perked up as if she’d genuinely forgotten. “That’s right. I wanted to come tell you that everything is going to be okay.”
“It already is okay.”
She shook her head, her eyes suddenly brimming with excitement. She took a step forward and grabbed me by the shoulders. “No, this is better than okay. I sold my shares to an acquisitions company, Lane.”
She kept rambling on, but my ears were suddenly ringing and it felt like my world was collapsing around me.
Piece by piece, with every word she said, it was like I could feel the bricks of my carefully, lovingly crafted existence smacking down on my head.
My stomach swirled, bile shooting up the back of my throat.
“I’m moving to Thailand for a year to go on this incredible yoga retreat.
It’s soul-searching on a whole other level and now you’ll be able to do the same thing.
Go after what you really want instead of being stuck with something we inherited and have never wanted for ourselves.
See? I told you it was going to be okay. It’s?—”
“Who did you sell to?” I asked, not giving a damn that I was interrupting. “Tell me, Megan. Right now. Who are they? Which company?”
“Oh, Westwood and Sons.” She pursed those glossy lips in thought. “Why? Why don’t you sound excited about this?”
I gaped at her, my heart cracking in half as it really started dawning on me what she’d done. “You might not have wanted this for yourself, but it’s all I’ve ever wanted. I’m not losing it.”
Unable to look at her for even another second, I blew past her out of my office, not stopping to talk to Anna or Luella either.
Instead, I practically sprinted to the sidewalk, quickly looked up the address I needed, then hailed a cab and slid into the back seat like a ball player bringing home the game.
I barked the address at the driver as I slammed the door behind me. “It’s an emergency. Step on it, please.”